446 TKADITION AND HEKEDITY 



relatively less fertile, became the most fertile regions. Later the 

 progress connected with the industrial revolution led to another 

 remarkable shifting of the centre of advance into regions, that 

 is to say, where coal is abundant and easily worked. This shifting 

 of the focus of progress is often overlooked by those who seek an 

 explanation of the fact that the site of the earlier civilizations 

 has not remained the site of the later civilizations. * The con- 

 trasts ', says Professor Elliot Smith, ' in the achievements of the 

 various peoples cannot be explained away by lack of opportunities, 

 in face of the patent fact that among the most backward races 

 of the present day are some that first came into contact with, 

 or were even the founders of, civilization, and were most favour- 

 ably placed for acquiring culture and material supremacy.' l 

 The shifting of the centre of progress is at least in part an explana- 

 tion. 



Within the third period there took place that remarkable 

 change in social organization already described which so markedly 

 stimulated the growth of skill and facilitated its transmission. 

 This change had the most profound effects on events in Europe 

 and Asia. With it we must associate a remarkable speeding up 

 of the progress in skill which has been the chief feature of the 

 last period of human history. The explanation of the acceleration 

 of progress is thus ultimately based on the endowment of different 

 regions in respect to fertility, location, and the facilities offered 

 to contact. It may also be noted that the further trend of events 

 in Europe and Asia is made comprehensible by this principle of the 

 shifting of the centre of greatest fertility on the one hand and by 

 the imperfect realization of the organic type of society on the 

 other. In India and in China there have been forces working 

 contrary to the full development of the organic type of organiza- 

 tion in the shape of devotion, largely on religious grounds, to 

 various forms of a segmentary division of society, and this may 

 prove to be one of the chief reasons why in Eastern Asia we seem 

 to be faced with a backwater out of the main stream of progress. 



Further, as tradition became more complex, small differences 

 in the environment often gave a favourable or unfavourable 

 turn to the development of skill. Thus after the invention of 

 writing countries were greatly favoured that possessed suitable 



1 Elliot Smith, Presidential Address to the British Association, Section H, 1912, 

 p. 577. 



